


The Art of Losing

by K_dAzrael



Series: Savages!verse [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Polyamory, cutting-edge space fashions, gin cocktails
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 17:27:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8022721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/K_dAzrael/pseuds/K_dAzrael
Summary: "It’s just, if I had to choose who from our old set would turn out to be some kind of pansexual polyamorous playboy, you would have been last on the list. No offense.”
  “Who would have been first?”
  “I don’t know. Maybe Yungkai, but then again that little shit never lived up to any of his potential."
Dispatches from deep in OC hell — the Trulaw/Cord fic the world probably doesn't need but I wrote anyway. Featuring, in order of appearance: a handbag-dwelling homunculus named Bobo; the One True martini recipe; a preview of hottest Corellian styles for autumn/winter 34 ABY; deeply homoerotic wrestling; the tantalizingly unanswered question: ‘is your girlfriend’s dick smooth or ribbed?’; polyamory… in spaaaaaace!





	The Art of Losing

**Author's Note:**

> Greetings Savages!verse fans! So kind anons on tumblr encouraged me to come up with [headcanons for the Cadet Hux Krewe](http://kdazrael.tumblr.com/tagged/savages-headcanons) and I accidentally started shipping Trulaw and Cord. Now they have their own spin-off fic! Also Kylostahp drew [this picture](http://kylostahp.tumblr.com/post/149766822602/so-ive-been-harassing-kdazrael-non-stop-about) of Cord and his tiny engineer girlfriend Nik and I want you all to gaze upon it and suffer with me.

> The art of losing isn’t hard to master; 
> 
> so many things seem filled with the intent 
> 
> to be lost that their loss is no disaster. ([‘One Art’](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/47536), Elizabeth Bishop)

 

Trulaw pushes his way up the spiral staircase as the leaves of the bronzewood tree wave overhead, dappling the afternoon party-goers with pleasant shade.  As he ducks under a side-sprouting branch that a group of guests are using as a surface to rest their drinks on Trulaw reflects, not for the first time, that he really ought to have kept a closer eye on the architect. In retrospect, telling someone as relentlessly avant-garde as Daahl Sunquist to ‘do something light and airy, really bring nature in’ was asking for trouble.

Trulaw squeezes past oblivious society dames who stand drawn together in eager, simultaneous conversation, and clambers over ruffled crinolines and lapped trains of chersilk. He finds his mother on the third floor in a bright, rectangular room that pivots away from the central mass of the house over empty air, providing a dizzying view of the valley below. She is seated on the end of a long sofa that travels the length of the transparent East-facing wall, her cronies on her far side all sitting angled towards her like a mural of votaries attending to the teachings of a prophet.

“Mother!” Trulaw calls out, looking stern.

Astoria ‘Vi’ Tal Marr turns her head and gives him a cool, appraising glance, one sharply defined eyebrow lifting above the other. She is wearing a dark blue tailored jumpsuit belted around her narrow waist and a tippet of vjun fox fur. On her head is a wrap made of some gold, reflective material, gathered together at the front with a large brooch. Trulaw frowns as he sees the light glinting off the blue and white diamond winking at the brooch’s centre: he has always privately resented that Vi so eagerly shrugged off the Trulaw name but nonetheless insisted on the widow’s privilege of turning her former husband into an ostentatious piece of jewellery. He comforts himself with the knowledge that one day, when he finally inherits the piece, he will be able to liberate his father’s mortal remains from their gaudy setting and have the soul diamond incorporated into something more tasteful.

“Hello, mother,” he says as he comes to a halt in front of her.

“Don’t call me that,” she snaps. “It makes me sound about a hundred years old.”

“Would you mind?” Trulaw says, addressing the group of hangers-on. What they might or should mind is left unsaid, but the guests take flight, murmuring compliments and with much kissing of the air in proximity to Vi’s face.

“Well,” Vi purses her lips critically as she looks Trulaw up and down, “is that what you’re wearing these days? Rather late in the season for _pastel_ , don’t you think?”

Trulaw glances at his pale pink embroidered jacket. “This is House of Holmack’s autumn/winter collection. Honestly, your ideas about seasonally appropriate fashion went out with the Empire.”

Vi affects a long-suffering look, leaning her cheek on a hand that terminates in stiletto-shaped nails painted the same deep, blood red as her lipstick. “Is there something you wanted, darling? It’s just I am rather in the middle of something.”

Trulaw rubs at the frown-lines he feels establishing themselves between his eyebrows. “I believe I have mentioned this before, but this is _Wikk’s house_ now. You can’t throw parties here on a whim. Technically you’re trespassing and I wouldn’t blame him in the slightest if he decided to call the police and have the lot of you ejected.”

Vi laughs, opening her handbag and pulling out a small, hairless mammal which appears disgruntled at being dragged from its dark, perfume-scented lair. It blinks its yellow bulbous eyes slowly, one after another. Vi lifts it up and coos some nonsense at it, leaving a dark lipstick print on its pallid, wrinkly face.  “Wikk is the sweetest and most obliging thing,” she says, still looking at the handbag creature. “He doesn’t mind at all, does he Bobo? No, he doesn’t!”

“Maaaaaa,” says ‘Bobo’, opening its jaws. Taking in the narrow look of malevolence on the creature’s face, Trulaw has the uncomfortable idea that it might be sentient, but he can’t imagine that any creature possessed of reason would consent to live in his mother’s handbag.

Vi leans forward and reaches into her martini glass, extracting first the olive, then the red strand of pimento embedded in its centre, feeding this latter morsel to the creature on her knee. Then she plinks the disembowelled olive back into the drink and clicks her fingers at a CG-series hospitality droid loitering nearby. “You. Bring me another of these. Make it properly this time.”

The droid makes a clicking sound as it articulates its torso to face her. “My apologies madam. My databanks indicate that there are thirty-six approved variations of this particular cocktail. Please explain your preferred combination and methods.”

“Nonsense. There’s only one right way to make a martini. Go on, off with you.”

The droid makes a burbling, recalculating sound. “Apologies. My databanks do not indicate one method that is preferred above the thirty-five others. Please explain―”

“Don’t be tiresome ― I said I want a _martini_. It’s a very simple request.”

“Vi, stop taunting the servants. You’ll get it stuck an infinite loop.”

“It’s not my fault their programming is lacking.”

Trulaw turns to the droid. “Take a frozen glass. Coat the inside of it with dry vermouth ― just enough to coat it, there should be no excess. Pour sixty millilitres of Sullustan gin into a jug with ice, stir it with a glass rod ― not metal, _glass_ ― and then pour it into the martini glass. Garnish with two green olives. _Green_.”

Vi gives him an indulgent smile. “There now. You did learn something from me after all.”

Trulaw runs a hand back through his hair and sighs. “Is Wikk here? Please tell me you didn’t drive him from his own home.”

“Oh yes, he’s somewhere about. He’s looking rather peaky these days. You ought to take better care of him.”

“We’re separated ― I told you that months ago.”

“Well this nonsense has gone on long enough. Surprise him with a new speeder or a baby or some other extravagant thing. Then you can kiss, make up, and get on with your lives.”

“He doesn’t want a baby!”

“Oh they’re very good nowadays. I hear it only takes a cheek swab. You can mix and match the features, too ― give it his sweet temperament and your bone structure. I’m sure he’d be delighted.”

“I’m not going to bring a baby into the world as a last ditch effort to save my marriage. It’s not as if that worked for you.”

“Alten dear, I had you when I thought there would be an empire for you to inherit. Gatt was a very sweet, absolutely hopeless man. Thank the stars you didn’t take after him.”

“I’m going to talk to Wikk now,” Trulaw says, staring fixedly at the soul diamond and imagining the faint glow from within the stone is his father sympathizing with him from beyond the grave.

Vi waves her sharp fingernails at him, depositing Bobo back in his leathery lair. “You do that. Remember what I said about the gift ― oh, bring him a drink! That way you can get the DNA from a glass and make it a surprise.”

After taking his leave of Vi, Trulaw makes his way down a back set of stairs and along a sharply curving corridor to the West-facing living area, then through a set of double doors that open out onto the back terrace. The paved area is roofed over with glass supported by joists of wood that are set at an angle, casting dynamic bars of shade across the wide empty space in the light of the setting sun.

At the far end of the terrace is a wooden bench in a curved, ergonomic shape, piled about with richly embroidered pillows and draped with a thick gaberwool rug. Wikk is sitting on it with one bare foot pulled up on the seat, a datapad abandoned atop a nearby cushion. He is staring off at something with a look of keen intent. Trulaw follows his gaze to where a shaft of light has illuminated a fat yellow and red spider busily making its web between two of the roof beams, the light mist that is falling in the garden beyond catching in the fine strands of silk and hanging there like crystal beads on a string.

Wikk is wearing a round-necked shirt of crinkled muslin and a pair of loose trousers in dark grey velvet. The evening sun picks out the red highlights in his dark brown skin. Trulaw is momentarily annoyed by how winsome and photogenic he looks, as if Wikk has somehow staged this effect and artfully lain in wait here for Trulaw to discover him.

“Hello,” Trulaw says, finding his voice suddenly too quiet to fill the space. He feels vague and insubstantial; a ghost haunting a place it no longer has the power to influence.

Wikk’s head turns and Trulaw sees that his first involuntary reaction is one of relief. “Alten!”

He rises to his feet and comes forward to fold Trulaw into an embrace. Trulaw returns it greedily, lowering his head to catch Wikk’s scent. He is wearing the cologne Trulaw got him for his last birthday: a subtle, woody fragrance, and under that is the clean smell of his skin. The familiarity is so striking it is almost eerie. Trulaw is momentarily struck with an irrational conviction that this man is the exact double of his husband, recreated in painstaking detail for some sinister purpose.

Wikk pats his back and releases him, smiling wide with all his white, even teeth. “I’m so glad you’re here. I was just going to call you, actually.”

“Yes ― I’m dreadfully sorry about this,” Trulaw gestures towards the doors leading back into the house. “I’ve told her she has no business being here and that you’re perfectly within your rights to have her and her awful friends tossed out on their backsides. She’s utterly oblivious. Perhaps she thought she’d get in one last dastardly act of mother-in-lawing before you finally escape her clutches.”

“Alten don’t be silly. I don’t use the house ― she’s welcome to it.  Here, come and sit down ― I want to tell you something.”

Trulaw is momentarily bewildered as Wikk leads him back to the bench. He knows it would be unwise to hope for anything good ― Wikk suddenly changing his mind about the divorce, for instance. More likely, Wikk has found someone else and Trulaw will have to say goodbye to this state of limbo and take his place somewhere lower.

“So, uh… I’m leaving Corellia.”

Trulaw blinks at him, taken aback. “When? Why?”

“As soon as possible. I’m going to help with the relief effort for the Hosnian refugees. They’re building an encampment on Danteel for all the people who were off-world when the destruction happened. I’m going to be helping co-ordinate and allocate funds and they need someone on the ground to oversee that.” Wikk is smiling, as if he thinks Trulaw will instantly grasp what a wonderful opportunity this is.

“How long will you be away?”

“I’m not sure. Ten standard months, at least.”

“Are you coming back after that?”

“Maybe. I guess it depends on galactic stability, long term. I have a friend with contacts in the Resistance and she says they’re going to need―”

“You can’t join the Resistance,” Trulaw blurts out. “You’ll get yourself killed you sentimental idiot.”

“Don’t talk to me like that. I’m not an idiot.”

Trulaw puts a hand over his own mouth. “I know that ― I didn’t mean―”

“Alten, I know you’re not naïve. You see what’s happening and exactly where things are going. I don’t think we’ll always have the luxury of avoiding conflict. If we have to fight I know which side I want to be on.”

Trulaw puts a hand on his shoulder and gives him a beseeching look. “Wikk darling, you are many things but you are not a soldier. You don’t know… you don’t know how brutal things are out there. The First Order are fanatics - they would mow down someone like you and not even break stride.”

“I’m not going to sign up to be a combatant! Stars, I shouldn’t be talking to you about this anyway.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know what it means. You went to school with half of the First Order’s high command. You’re not exactly up in arms against them.”

“You’re damn right I went to school with them ― that’s how I know how terribly dangerous they are. These people came from nothing and the only thing that sustains them in life is a fixed delusion that it’s their destiny to bring order to the galaxy. They can’t be reasoned with, they can’t be threatened, and there won’t be any peace in the Core Worlds until what’s left of the New Republic rolls over and gives them what they want.”

“I don’t believe that defeatist talk. There are still a lot of good people who are prepared to stand up and fight for what’s right. The Order can’t triumph unless we let it.”

Trulaw sighs, takes out a cigarra case and sticks one of its contents between his lips.  “I don’t understand you. You’re a human, you’re not a politician: what difference does it make to you what flag flies over the governmental buildings?”

Wikk makes a noise somewhere between exasperation and disgust. “Stars, Alten. Please tell me you are being rhetorical.”

“It’s a fair question.”

“It’s a _sociopathic_ question. Look, I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” he takes Trulaw’s hand and squeezes it beseechingly. “I’ve made up my mind. I don’t want the last words between us to be angry ones.”

“The _last_ words?”

“I hope not, but maybe. I signed my part of the divorce papers - they should be with your attorney in the morning.”

“Oh,” Trulaw blows out a thin stream of smoke, keeping his eyes on the way it curls and fades.  “So that’s it?”

“That’s it. I know… I mean, we’ve been separated a while now, but it still seems sudden, doesn’t it? Cruel, even ― I’m so sorry.”

“Why are you apologizing? I’m the one who made a mess of things. I wanted to make you happy ― I’m sorry I wasn’t able to.”

“I know you did, Alten. I _was_ happy ― for such a long time. But the galaxy is changing around us and I can’t bury myself here anymore. I can’t go to parties and hang on your arm and pretend I don’t know where all this prosperity comes from.”

“Ah. So that’s why you don’t want anything in the settlement ― you think it’s blood money?”

Wikk glances down. “I don’t want it because it’s yours. You made it all, it belongs to you ― for good or bad, I don’t know. I’m leaving in two days. I can’t take any of it with me.”

“Should I… is there a fund I should donate to, for the refugees? Or do you think that dreadfully hypocritical of me?”

“Any help is appreciated. I can give you the charity details if you want. But don’t... don’t use them to contact me, please. Not for a while, anyway.”

“As you wish.”

“We need a clean break.”

“ _You_ need a clean break. There’s no ‘we’ in this.”

“No, you’re right.”

“Sorry,” Trulaw says, helplessly. “I shouldn’t have said that. There’s no call to be catty.”

Wikk gives him a sad, earnest look. “Alten, you do have a right to be angry at me. I know this came out of the blue ― I know it doesn’t make much sense and you did nothing to deserve it.”

“Why did you leave me? I never understood that. Did you just wake up one morning and realise you didn’t love me after all? Was there ― is there ― someone else?”

Wikk shakes his head, hands folded together primly in his lap. “I never stopped loving you. I just realised that if I stayed I couldn’t become the person I want to be. For that I have to be alone, and I have to make some hard choices.”

“You have to martyr yourself, you mean?”

Wikk refuses to rise to this remark. Instead he reaches up and fiddles with something at the back of his neck. He holds up a fine silver chain, suspended on it shines his wedding band, custom made and cast in lutetium with gold banding (Trulaw’s own ring is the reverse). “Here,” he says, “you should take this. I know it’s very valuable.”

“It’s one of a kind. Please keep it.”

“I don’t―” Wikk stops himself, but Trulaw knows what he was going to say: _I don’t have a use for it_.

“Unless,” Trulaw offers, “you think it’s bad luck?”

“No, Alten. I don’t think that.” Chastened, Wikk refastens the necklace and tucks it back under the collar of his shirt.

Trulaw turns his face aside, looking through the gap between two beams and into the garden beyond, barely more than a green haze in the mist. He thinks of the first night they spent in this house ― all the appliances were new and incomprehensibly sleek and they could not figure out how to turn on the lights or the heat. But Wikk knew how to light a fire and they sat downstairs and drank wine from the bottle, laughing like giddy children as they huddled in its glow, wrapped a single blanket. “What was the point of all this, Wikk?” he asks. “All the time and energy we put into knowing one another, into understanding ― and now it’s over. It seems so foolish.”  

“No,” Wikk shakes his head vehemently, reaches out a hand to grip Trulaw’s own which remains lax and unresponsive. “Don’t say that.”

Truaw thinks about the man who lit the fire ― who loved him without reservation and imagined a future for them together; a pale, mortal version of _forever_. The present is seeping into that memory and tainting it, making that Wikk either a liar or a fool.

After a pause, Wikk says, hesitantly: “my mother used to say ‘hold on tight in love, but when it’s over you have to let go, or it’ll tear.’ I think about that a lot. Maybe it’s corny, I don’t know, but that’s what I want to do with our love. To make sure I can remember you how you deserve to be remembered.”

The taste of the fine tabac suddenly turns sour in Trulaw’s mouth. He flicks what remains of the cigarra into the wet garden and listens to it extinguish with a dull hiss. He isn’t sure what disgusts him more: the inanity of Wikk’s platitudes or the absolute sincerity with which he says them. “Well,” he counters, “all my mother ever said about love was ‘don’t be a damn fool and make sure you get something out of it.’ Perhaps you should have taken her advice instead.”

Wikk sighs; a soft, defeated sound. “Do you have a person to talk to, Alten? I think you should get someone. I know you don’t like admitting that you’re sad, or angry, but you can’t outrun your feelings forever.”

 _That’s where you’re wrong_ , Trulaw thinks. He feels a twinge of bitter triumph at this ― Wikk thinks him just shallow and selfish in some ordinary way, after all.

For months he has been afraid that Wikk had finally learned the truth.

*~*~*

It is raining heavily by the time Trulaw pulls his speeder onto the landing area on the penthouse terrace. In the ten seconds it takes him to go from his vehicle to the entrance his light-weight suit is completely soaked through.

B1-THX meets him at the doorway, clicking in agitation before he can get any words out. “Master Alten, he was quite insistent.”

“Who was?”

“Or perhaps ‘insistent’ is not the right word,” the droid pauses, apparently searching his databanks for the right word. “ _Menacing_.” The flat vocoder tones somehow convey a morbid relish.

“ _Who_?”

“Your visitor, sir. He’s waiting for you in the reception room.”

“Which one?”

“The Senatorial Suite.”

“Ah, excellent. If I’m going to be murdered, at least I can die with a drink in my hand.” Trulaw steps beneath the awning and pushes his wet hair back off his face. “Why did you let this person in?”

“He says he went to school with you.”

“That really does nothing to assuage my concerns. I went to school with the worst bastards in the entire Outer Rim.”

“Yes master, you have mentioned that once or twice before.”

The doors zig-zag back with a whir to admit him and Trulaw strides past B1-THX, then abruptly turns on his heel. “That painting in the Senatorial Suite―”

“Your wedding portrait, sir?”

“Yes. Have it taken down first thing tomorrow. Bring the catalogue for vault 5B so I can see what we’ve got in storage. I suppose I’ll have to make space in the schedule for that beastly lawyer.”

“Which, sir?”

“The divorce lawyer.”

B1-THX touches the tips of his intricately articulated fingers together. “Ah, Master Wikk won’t be returning then?”

“No, Master Wikk will not be returning. He’s moving to Danteel in the short term and then in the long term he plans to get himself murdered by the First Order.”

“I see. Will he be requiring his winter wardrobe?”

Trulaw rubs a hand over his face. “Danteel is a tropical planet, isn’t it? At least parts of it are. Oh who knows? Pack up all of Master Wikk’s things and we’ll donate them to some charity. I don’t suppose he minds which as long as it’s something in the way of do-gooding.”

“Shall I draw up a list?”

“Yes, yes... but first go and run me a bath. If I’m not up in twenty minutes call CorSec and tell them Looker Storno did it. I imagine if I’m going to be assassinated he’s somehow behind it.”

“This is a lot of information, sir. Shall I repeat it back to you?”

“No. Stars, forget all of it except the bath. That’s the important bit.”

“If you say so, sir.” B1-THX shuffles ahead of him with his awkward side-to-side gait, heading off towards the stairs.

When Trulaw makes his way to the Senatorial Suite he finds that the overhead lights are all switched off. The blue-white glare of the cityscape streams through the floor-to-ceiling windows, the illumination flickering as it refracts through the droplets of rain streaking the outside of the glass. Outlined against this glowing backdrop there stands a great, hulking figure of a man dressed in a long military coat and knee-high boots. 

The fractured light playing over the man’s dark skin makes the shape of his face hard to discern, but as the figure steps closer to the warm circle of yellow cast by a standing lamp, Trulaw can see that the uneven appearance is not merely projected: a wide, purplish scar runs from the left side of the man’s forehead to the middle of his cheek, bisecting his eyebrow. The surface of the scar is raised and textured like tree bark. The man’s left eye looks completely black, but the light flashes off it in tones of red when it rolls in the socket to focus on Trulaw, emitting an audible whir.

“Cord,” Trulaw says, unsure whether or not he is relieved to recognise the other man. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Cord does not answer the question. He looks Trulaw up and down, hands clasped behind him as he stands at parade rest. “You look like shit,” he says.

“I see you’re as tactful as ever.” Trulaw shivers as beads of water start to drip down inside his collar. “And you’re one to talk! You do know that half your face is missing?”

The other man grunts at this, showing a sliver of his white teeth. “So?”

When Trulaw thinks of Cord he always imagines movement: Cord throwing himself with a violence that borders on grace as he tackles a member of an opposing sports team; Cord laying into some wretch unfortunate or foolhardy enough to draw his ire, his striking arm moving with the regularity of a piston. Trulaw always forgets, somehow, how very still Cord is the rest of the time, as if his body is a great coil winding up its power, waiting for the precise moment to release.

Trulaw can hear water thudding onto the floor at his feet as it drips from his hair and rolls off his shoulders. He feels feverish beneath his clothes. Cord steps forward and unwraps a tattered scarf from around his neck and throws it at him in a low, underhand toss. Trulaw fumbles as he catches it to stop it hitting him in the face. It smells like sweat and musk and Trulaw shivers, thinking about how he embraced Wikk earlier and how the fragrance of his skin was both strange and unbearably familiar. He presses the fabric gingerly to the back of his neck, trying not to think about how he is rubbing another person’s essence over himself like an animal trying to disguise its scent. “Why are you here?” he asks again, more plaintively this time.

“I have leave,” Cord says, as if this explains everything.

Trulaw opens his mouth to point out the irrationality of the unannounced visit ― that he hasn’t seen Cord since… well, since his wedding. He sighs, then tosses the other man back his scarf before crossing to the bar and reaching across it to grab hold of an unopened bottle of brandy standing on a back shelf. He upends a glass and pours himself a generous measure of the liquor.

“I’m getting divorced,” he says. “Did you know that?”

Cord grunts an affirmative, stuffing the ragged furl of fabric into one of the deep pockets of his overcoat. Trulaw lifts the bottle towards him and he nods.

“I saw him today,” Trulaw continues as he pours out the second glass. “That’s where I was – at a dreadful party where my soon-to-be ex-husband told me that being married to me is incompatible with living a good life. And then I got rained on and this is hand-dyed silk.”

As he passes the glass to Cord he frowns, searching for the pertinent information hidden somewhere in the depths of his self-pity fogged mind. “You had a girlfriend, didn’t you? The engineer – is that still going?”

“Yeah.”

“Good for you. Well, here’s to my return to the gay bachelor life, I suppose,” Trulaw raises his glass, but Cord doesn’t tilt his up to meet it. Trulaw sighs again and then tips the brandy down his throat. “Anyway,” he says after he has swallowed and can feel the liquor lying warm and caustic in his stomach, “I’m going to have a bath and then I’m going to drink the rest of that bottle. Would you like to join me ― for the second part, obviously?”

Cord grunts in the affirmative.

“Good.” As Trulaw turns to leave he catches sight of the portrait hanging on the far wall, nothing more than a large black rectangle in the low light. “Let’s take the pity party outside to the terrace, shall we? I think it’s clearing up.”

*~*~*

“It seems my penthouse is becoming quite the popular vacation spot,” Trulaw observes as he gulps at his fourth brandy. “Do you know who favoured me with a royal visit some weeks ago?” He lets the suspense build as he leans over the back of the bench seat to flip a switch embedded in the wall. A heat lamp emerges from its niche and putters to life, floating down closer to them. “The General.”

“Hux?” Cord asks, as if they might have some other general in common.

“Hux,” Trulaw confirms. “He brought his new boyfriend. You know his type: tall, dark, freckles, worryingly submissive.”

“Hux is queer?”

“Are you kidding me? Did you somehow miss the part where we were groping at each other like crazed lepi ages seventeen through eighteen?”

Cord lifts his eyebrows, his eyes rolling upwards as he shuffles his memories to insert this new information.

“I asked him about the Hosnian system,” Trulaw continues with a meaningful look.

“What Hosnian system?”

It takes Trulaw a second longer than it should to realise this is a joke – Cord’s rare forays into deadpan humour pass a lot of people by. “Very droll,” he says. “Did you know they were going to do that?”

Cord shakes his head and takes a swallow of his drink.

“No,” Trulaw muses to himself. “Why would you? And how did they take it down your end of the galaxy?”

Cord is silent for a long time in response to this question; so long that it seems like he intends to simply ignore it. Eventually, he says: “It’s a shift in gear.”

At first Trulaw thinks ― deliriously ― that Cord is being _metaphorical_ , but after a moment he realizes that of course he’s not. The Order is a machine. Cord’s role within it is to churn out cannon fodder, fast or slow according to demand.

“Yes, your higher-ups have played their hand, alright. It’s open war. I suppose you prefer that – subtlety was never your strong suit.”

Cord swirls his drink around the glass, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with this sentiment.

Trulaw finishes his fourth drink and pours himself a fifth. He replaces the bottle on the table with a louder-than-intended clack. Sitting back, he cradles the glass against his stomach. “Tell me, Cord, did your life turn out like you wanted it to?”

Cord glances up, brow crinkling as if he finds the question incomprehensible.

Trulaw expands: “I remember that when we were young there was a great deal of idle talk about the future.” Now that he recalls, these conversations were all with Hux, Saff and Yungkai ― he never bothered to ask Cord what he wanted for his future. “You must have had hopes, or at least expectations.”

Cord turns his gaze back to the cityscape. “I’m a soldier. I go where I’m sent.”

“That is the advantage of army life, I suppose ― to be free of all that troublesome free will. But then, it’s all contingent on usefulness, isn’t it? That’s your end of the bargain ― an able body, a sound mind.” Trulaw sucks down a mouthful of the brandy and goes to light a cigarra before realising he already has one burning in the ashtray. He flicks the end of it and puts it to his mouth to take a deep drag, feeling his light-headedness soar. “I wasn’t cut out to be a man of action. I’m not sure what I was cut out for, really. Making money, perhaps. That came easily ― funny that, my father always made it look so hard.”

“Prell is retiring,” Cord says, apropos of nothing.

Trulaw shrugs. “Good for him. So what?”

“The commandant ― my boss ― thinks I should apply. She thinks I’d have a good chance because I’m an old boy.”

Trulaw coughs and splutters as a mouthful of smoke catches in his throat. “To run the shitshow on NEC-52? Seriously?”

Cord lifts one shoulder. “It’s not like it was. Co-ed, now, for one thing. Better allocation of resources.”

Trulaw stares off blankly into the night. After a considerable pause he says: “I always thought Prell _knew_ ― you know, what really happened to Riggs.”

“And he just let us away with it?”

“The whole situation was frakked. Berkal’s mother wasn’t even informed for the best part of a standard year. She’d moved ships and they didn’t have her contact details right. I think Prell was just trying to salvage whatever plausible deniability he could.”

Cord raises an eyebrow, considering it. “Does that make my chances better or worse, do you think?”

“ _Stars_ , Cord ― you wouldn’t really take that job, would you?”

“Better pay.”   

“Do you even _like_ kids?”

“Sure, they’re ok. They’re not like _we_ were.”

Trulaw laughs. “Oh we were special little snowflakes, weren’t we?” He lets himself slide down the sofa, shuffling his slippered feet. “Alright – I think we’re drunk enough for some real talk. If things are so great with your girlfriend, why are you here?”

Cord rubs the back of his head, rolls one shoulder. “Nik’s on rotation on a destroyer.”

“Doesn’t it bother you ― the long distance?”

“Not really.”

“Fine. Aren’t you going to ask why my husband is divorcing me?”

“No.”

“Why, isn’t that why you came all this way ― to hear my tale of heartbreak and woe?” Trulaw laughs, head to lolling sideways on the cushion. “I was surprised you even came to the wedding, you know. I didn’t think it was your scene. Wikk said he rather thought that you didn’t like him.”

“I didn’t.”

“That’s preposterous ― everyone likes Wikk. He’s an angel who walks among us.”

“He’s not one of us.”

“Not an Order sympathiser?”

“Not one of _us_.”

“Oh,” Trulaw takes another contemplative drag on his cigarra. “You think I should have married someone from the academy, then? Stars, not Hux, I hope.” When Cord says nothing to this he continues, tongue running on heedlessly: “perhaps I oughtn’t to have married anyone. Hux says he’s _not the marrying kind_ and no doubt he’s right. None of us are – except Erril, obviously. He got out relatively unscathed, though how he managed that I never knew.”  

Again, Cord says nothing. After an initial awkwardness, Trulaw is starting to think Cord is an ideal guest: it is like being in the room with an overlarge pet, giving one the sense of company and a licence to talk out loud without the effort of having to keep up a two-way conversation. Trulaw allows himself to slide down further, head hanging over the edge of the seat, the rush of blood making everything seem more intense and surreal. “I never told him I loved him,” he rambles on. “Wikk, obviously, not Erril. I would agree with him when he said it – _yes, darling, you too_. I never said it on my own, the three words. I wonder if that made a difference, in the end. I wanted to say it, sometimes, but something would stop my words before I could get them out. Perhaps it was because I didn’t want to lie to him. I didn’t tell him the full truth, of course – how could I? But mental reservation isn’t as bad as lying, that’s what I tell myself.”

Trulaw sighs, exhaustion hitting him so powerfully he can feel his face growing lax with it. His tongue is thick and hard to manoeuvre. “I just wanted to keep him close to me, to see him be happy. He had such a beautiful smile – still does, I suppose. I shouldn’t talk about him like he’s dead.” He forces his eyes to flutter open again as he feels a hand taking the cigarra from between his lax fingers. Cord leans forward and stubs it out, then rises to his feet.

“I’m really not tired,” Trulaw protests uselessly as a thick arm winds its way around his torso and drags him upright. “This is very unnecessary,” he slurs faintly as he stumbles against Cord’s side, dragged along like a wounded comrade being helped from the field.    

“Left or right?” Cord asks, his voice a rumble against Trulaw’s ear as they reach the top of the stairs.

“Left,” Trulaw moans faintly as his shoulder glances off the doorframe on their way into the darkened room. Cord lowers him down slowly in a dancer’s dip, then lets go so that Trulaw bounces on the mattress with a weak groan. He feels his slippers being tugged off and two thuds as they hit the floor. After a struggle he manages to open one eyelid. “Have you been shown to a bedroom? Just… just pick one. It doesn’t matter. They’re all empty, and all made up. Ha, made up.”

“Go to sleep,” Cord tells him sternly.

Trulaw does.

*~*~*

Trulaw wakes with a hangover so filthy he can only bear to wear a suit in a dark mauve, and not the brilliant azure he had earmarked for this day. In the chauffeur-driven speeder on his way to oversee the works he has to lie down on his side across the back seat and pull his cloak over his head, thanking whatever powers there might be in the galaxy that he bothered to have it lined with a thick, high-quality velvoid capable of blocking out all light.

After a torturously busy day that involves reviewing account records, meeting with board members and giving an inspirational speech to a group of durasteelworkers, Trulaw returns to his penthouse to breathe a sigh of relief, prepared to throw himself down onto a couch and pass out.

“Shall I set two places for dinner, Master Alten?” B1-THX asks, meeting him in the doorway.

“Two?” Trulaw frowns, blinking rapidly.

“Your guest, sir. Major Cord.”

“Who the hell is Major Cord?” Trulaw asks, brain short circuiting as he tries to envision the person who would go by such a ridiculous name. It sounds like a character from an animated holo-film for children. “Oh!” he presses his palm to his forehead, “Cord! Is he still here?”

“Yes, Master Alten. He’s in the gymnasium.”

“I have a gymnasium?”

“The employee gymnasium, sir. On the twenty-second floor.”

“Kriff!” Trulaw sets off at a fast clip towards the back of the penthouse, weaving through rooms until he reaches the turbolift. At his arrival on the twenty-second floor he is momentarily disorientated, having never been in this part of his own building. Employees he does not recognise (but who apparently recognise him), pause in their exercises as he rushes past, one slipping off a treadmill and another narrowly avoiding dropping a kettlebell on her own foot. He eventually locates Cord, finding him alone in one of the smaller training rooms, pummelling a punching bag with a look of intense focus.

“Cord!” he says breathlessly, clutching at the stitch cramping up along his side _._ “Stars! I completely forgot about you. Can you ever forgive me? It’s been one hell of a day.” 

Cord does not look up from the surface of the punching bag, which he hits in sharp, targeted jabs. He is shirtless, wearing only a pair of dark grey tracksuit bottoms, slung low on his hips, and his body is what can only be described as bewilderingly muscular. Cord was fairly solid even in his academy days – there were always those willing to trade rations for his protection (or at least, his indifference), but Trulaw finds himself unprepared for the bulk and definition there. _Kriffing hell, he could choke a rancor to death with those arms._

A memory jolts to the front of his mind of a long-ago sports match. One of their instructors had liked to corral the cadets into recreating the ancient warrior games of the Echani. Captain Pheeb always prefaced these occasions with a long speech extolling the virtues of such displays of manly fortitude and honour. Meanwhile, the cadets would snigger and nudge each other, considering this a slim pretext for getting them down to their undershirts and high-cut gym shorts. 

Trulaw recalls one particular wrestling tournament where they were divided up into heats by dorm: he remembers Saff’s infectious laughter and Yungkai cursing beneath him; the Berkal twins making little more than a token effort before Eli tapped out, breathing raspily, and Est scrambled up to help him to his feet; Knight sitting on Hux’s thighs and holding his face to the mat with an arm laid across the back of his neck ― apparently oblivious to the murderous look on Hux’s bright red face as he struggled. Trulaw remembers being surprised that Knight didn’t just throw the match, but then again, Knight had some quaint ideas about good sportsmanship.

“No bloody way,” Trulaw had said when his name was drawn alongside Cord’s. “Aren’t there supposed to be weight classes?”

“There’s no-one in his weight class,” Saff had observed.

Trulaw gestured emphatically to where Cord stood before him, blocking out the light. “Too frakking right there isn’t!”

The bell rang and they took their places on the grubby mat, crouching down with their arms slightly raised.

“Scared?” Cord had asked, grinning.

“Of being pounded into raw meat on this floor? I’m a little concerned, yes.”

“I won’t hurt your pretty face,” Cord taunted.

“Why Marion, I didn’t know you cared.”

Calling him by his given name was always a mistake. With a cry of rage, Cord sprang forward, keeping his weight low, and tackled Trulaw onto the mat with a resounding thud. Trulaw’s first thought was to go limp – it would probably annoy Cord more if he just refused to cooperate with this farce, after all, but suddenly the unfairness of it all rankled him. Cord thought he would win – he always did win at anything requiring brute strength. Trulaw struggled experimentally against the weight of him, testing the bruising grip around his shoulder and wrist.

“Bet you love this,” Cord murmured against his ear, a thick thigh hooking around his middle and pinning down his hips.

That was when Trulaw reared up and bit him, sinking his teeth into a corner of Cord’s ear and thumping him as hard as he could in the ribs with the one hand he had managed to get free. The spectators sent up a roar, thrilled by the sight of blood; of a foregone conclusion suddenly taking a turn for the unexpected. Pheeb blew his whistle and shouted half-heartedly for them to desist, that this was _not in the spirit of these noble games_ , but Trulaw had no intention of stopping.  He manoeuvred his knee and thumped Cord in the crotch with it; Cord yelled and fell onto his side, allowing Trulaw to scramble over him, digging his nails into the other youth’s thick neck. He grinned triumphantly at Cord’s look of shock and pain. “I love what?” he hissed.

His victory was very short lived: as soon as he recovered from his shock, Cord rolled over and pinned Trulaw in a heartbeat, grinding the bones of his wrist and compressing his ribs with the full weight of his body. Trulaw laughed and as he did so blood dripped from the torn flesh where Cord’s ear joined the corner of his jaw. Trulaw felt it patter against his chin, some of it splashing against the enamel of his teeth.

Back in the present, he notes that Cord still has a scar there. It pales in comparison to the dark, keloid one that mars the left side of his face, but Trulaw is suddenly struck with the intimacy of the thing ― that he has marked another person in a way they will carry for the rest of their life.

When Cord finishes this round of punches he steps back and shakes his wrists out, then starts to unwind the tape from around his knuckles. He looks Trulaw up and down again. “You look like slightly warmed-up shit. Where have you been all day?”

“Working,” Trulaw snaps. “I have a modest industrial empire to run, you know. And I do not look like shit – this is from Emi Kokuri’s ‘Mode’ collection.”

“That colour looks terrible on you.”

“What would you know, mister wore-a-uniform-from-birth?”

Cord taps his left temple. “This thing picks up the ultraviolet spectrum.”

“Well I don’t have time to change before dinner so you’ll just have to put up with it. I assume you _do_ want to join me for dinner?”  

Cord grunts. “Yeah ok. Let me hit the shower first.”

“Right, good,” Trulaw says, trying not to imagine Cord in even fewer clothes and soaking wet. “I’ll see you upstairs then shall I?”

“If you want,” Cord says, inscrutable as ever.

*~*~*

The next morning, Trulaw dresses in a pair of pale green linen trousers with a pleated waist and a gauzy shirt with broad grey stripes. It has no buttons but is kept more or less decent by being tucked in. He picks up a straw hat with a forward-slanted, angular brim and makes his way down the stairs to the main living area. Breakfast is laid out on the low table and Cord is sitting on one of the sectional sofas, frowning as he flicks through channels on the holoprojector. He does not have the knack for manipulating the hovering display with quite the right motion of his fingertips - he is no doubt used to the older models that still have external buttons on the base console.

“What are you looking for?” Trulaw asks.

“Grav-ball results.”

Trulaw leans over his shoulder and finds the premium sports channel with a few deft swipes, then seats himself on the sofa opposite his guest, leaning forward to pour himself a cup of caf. Cord watches the holo intently, the pupil of his one natural eye flicking around as it follows the action of the highlight reel.

“Do you support a team?” Trulaw asks. People usually choose their allegiance on a planetary basis, but Cord, having been raised on star destroyers, presumably has no terra firma he could reasonably designate ‘home’.

“No,” he replies, glancing down long enough to heap fruit preserve onto a piece of bread and manoeuvre it into his mouth.

“Ah, just a fan of the beauty of the game, then.” Trulaw sips his caf and watches a slow-motion replay of someone’s shinbone snapping under a vicious tackle. “I’m not sure if you have plans for the day, but this afternoon I’m off to visit my uncle. He has a rather nice house in the countryside. Would you care to join us?”

“Yeah ok.” Cord’s eyes do not leave the projection and his face shows neither interest nor displeasure at the prospect. Trulaw wonders what exactly, if anything, Cord expected from this trip.

“Do you have something to wear? The old bird might have conniptions if he sees someone sitting down to afternoon tea in sportswear.”

Cord tilts his head to one side, chewing thoughtfully. “Got my uniform.”

“What colour is your uniform?”

“Blue-green.”

“What shade of blue-green? Would you say it’s more of an aquamarine or closer to a teal?”

“I don’t know. Why does it matter?”

“Oh it doesn’t,” Trulaw says, brushing an imaginary speck off his trousers. “It’s fine, I’m sure you’ll look very handsome.”

Cord stares at him. “Is that what you’re worried about ― that I’ll look better than you?”

Trulaw laughs dismissively. “No, I am not worried about that.” He suddenly feels a great pang of longing for his husband. Wikk had been obliging: neutral and earth tones were so easy to complement.

*~*~*

"Ahoy!” Trulaw shouts, waving his hat as they walk across the lawn to where a stooped, outdated-looking SE-6 droid is directing a hoverchair towards a table set with cups, plates and sparkling white linen.

The occupant of the chair, Porben Tal Marr, is wearing a fawn-coloured tunic and his waist is draped with a tauntaun fur rug, his elderly frame impervious to the balmy warmth of the day. His hair is so white as to appear translucent, lying over his skull like tiny filaments, and his skin is sallow and spotted, yet his mustache has a neat, military look and his eyes retain a birdlike brightness and focus.

“Fen, my dear boy!” Porben calls in a reedy voice, lifting a faintly trembling hand from the armrest of the chair. Trulaw goes to his side and presses the offered hand in his own, leaning down to kiss the old man’s cheek.

“Hello, uncle, you’re looking well.”

“Stuff and nonsense. Now, who is that strapping figure at your side?”

“This is Major Marion Cord. An old school friend of mine.”

“A school chum, eh? That’s disappointing. I thought for a moment you might have gotten back up on the horse.”

Trulaw lets out a slightly hysterical laugh. “No, old thing. He doesn't swing that way.” Trulaw turns his head when he hears a grunt that might be disagreement.  “Do you?”

“Sometimes.”

Trulaw puts his hand on top of his hat. “I never knew that about you.”

Cord lifts one shoulder in a negligent shrug.

Trulaw continues to stare at him in disbelief. “Wait, is the engineer a man?”

“No, Nik is a woman.”

“Let that be a lesson to you, Fen,” Porben says, smiling indulgently and patting Trulaw’s hand. “People can always surprise you. Usually unpleasantly, I might add, but sometimes otherwise.”

They sit down to tea and Trulaw does his duty as a nephew by filling Porben in on the week’s worth of petty scandal. He tells him about Vi’s squatter party, but judiciously leaves out the part where his husband renounced him forever. “I think I’m going to have buy a new house,” he concludes. “Somewhere with blank, unpictured walls and no memories. An address my mother doesn’t know. What do you think of Doaba Guerfel for a villa?”

“What's wrong with this place, Fen? Perhaps it's not to your taste, but soon enough you can rip out all my old junk and make it up new.”

“Are you thinking of employing me as your interior decorator, uncle?”

“No, but I’ll be out of the way soon enough. I have to give my ungrateful children something, I suppose, but they're not getting this place. I trust you have no objection to a little court battle?”

“I have everything I could want, old thing. Don't incur the wrath of your family on my account.”

“It’s for their own good. My children never had enough strife in their lives ― it left them quite weak and unformed I’m afraid.”

“I don’t find that hardship generally improves a person.”

Porben makes a sound of disagreement but does not press the matter, instead turning his attention to Cord. “I was in the Imperial Navy ― did Fen tell you that?”

“No, sir.”

“Oh I didn’t get very far. Made it to lieutenant and then had my commission bought out. Saw action once or twice, though. Battle of Sagma was the main one. I was a gunner ― kept my eyesight at least, though the hearing was shot. You look as if you’ve seen your fair share of action.”

Cord grunts in the affirmative.

“They named a colony planet after him,” Trulaw says, raising a teacup to his lips.

“Really?” Porben’s white eyebrows lift in grudging admiration.

Trulaw sips delicately. “I mean it’s in the Unknown Regions, but still.”

“We’re not supposed to call it that anymore,” Cord says. “It’s the New Frontier.”

“Well congratulations, Major,” Porben reaches out to pat Cord’s massive shoulder and Trulaw is a little concerned he might injure himself on that adamantine surface. “Shame about your face ― does it hold you back?”

Cord frowns. “No. Why would it?”

“That’s the spirit! So, can you find a nice officer for my nephew here? He’s terribly crestfallen. I think a man in uniform would do him the world of good.”

Trulaw sighs. “I can find my own love interests, uncle.”

“I don’t know about that. The last one was very flighty. Some stiff military discipline would serve you better.”

“I most strongly disagree.”  

They talk some more, but soon the old man’s head begins to droop onto his breast, his eyes fluttering closed. At this signal, the SE-6 makes its way across the lawn to retrieve its charge.

“Poor old thing,” Trulaw murmurs, leaning over and tucking the rug around his uncle’s knees more securely. “I suppose this is what we’ll all come to.”

“If we’re lucky,” says Cord, which strikes Trulaw as uncharacteristically insightful.

They watch in silence as the droid pulls the chair away, walking backwards with slow and deliberate clanking steps until it falls beneath the shadow of the house which stands grey and looming, as impervious to the sun’s cheer as its elderly master.

Trulaw pushes back his chair. “Come on,” he says with a forced cheerfulness. “I'll show you the grounds before we go, they’re quite lovely.”

He leads Cord around towards the rear of the house, through a thick wood of old growth trees and then down a rocky path to the edge of the bright green lake. When they reach the shore, Trulaw seats himself on a warm, flat stone and pats the space beside him. Cord eases down slowly, stretching one leg out before him and leaning back to catch himself on his hands. They watch as a flock of long-legged water birds rise up from a patch of weeds. Idly, Trulaw runs a fingertip around the deep grooves beneath his left knee, reading by touch the form of his own name, and those of his two cousins.

After a long moment of silent contemplation of the scenery, he announces: “I used to swim here as a child ― my father taught me. I remember him standing out there,” he raises a hand to point, “just where it falls off and starts to get deeper, telling me to jump and he would catch me. For the longest time, I wouldn't. I was a very anxious child, you know. My cousins were older than me, they’d be splashing and rough-housing, having a rare old time. And there I’d be, my toes at the edge of the water, wailing. What an awful spoilsport I must have been.” Trulaw moves his leg aside and shows the letters graven into the smooth rock. “This is us, look. Little vandals, weren't we?”

“Why do they call you ‘Fen’?” Cord asks, reading the carved names.

“That was my name for myself, when I was very little. I couldn't pronounce my ts.”

Cord looks off across the lake, his right eye squinting against the light winking off the surface of the water. “Do you think that water is warm?”

“Decidedly not. For brave souls only.”

Cord unfastens his belt, then starts to work on the closures at the front of his tunic.

Trulaw laughs. “I didn’t mean that as a dare. Can you even swim, spacer?”

“Sure.” Cord goes to work pulling off his heavy-soled boots and socks. “Used to sneak into the coolant reservoir on the _Vantage_ with my brothers.”

“Wasn't that water toxic?”

Cord makes a side-to-side gesture with one hand. “Nah, it was fine. I got some mild chemical burns once when I stayed in too long.”

“Did your brothers teach you?”

Cord makes a dismissive sound. “They threw me in, the first time.” He stands up and unfastens his wide-hipped trousers, pushing them down and stepping out of the pooled fabric. Lastly he slides off his underwear, then rolls all the clothes together in one neat bundle next to his boots. Cord looks back over his shoulder as he wades into the shallows. “Are you coming or what?”

Trulaw grins. He undresses more fastidiously, taking his time to fold the items of clothing with care, glancing up every now and then at the figure making even strokes through the water, his dark head breaking the surface every few metres like a curious seal.

As predicted, the water is bitingly cold and Trulaw hisses as it sloshes over his knees. He throws himself into the water and strikes out, the motion coming back to him without thought or hesitation. It feels good, the shock lighting up all his nerve endings and making him very present in his body.  When he gets about thirty metres out he rolls over onto his back and floats, staring up at the light wisps of cloud hanging across the sky like shreds of torn fabric.

He yelps and throws out his arms as something grasps at his ankle, dragging him under the surface, the lizard part of his brain kicking in and sending a spike of adrenaline before the rational part can assert itself and confirm that there are no monsters here. Cord surfaces next to him, a huge grin on his face. Trulaw grimaces and sends an arc of water over his head in retaliation.

“Look at you,” Trulaw says, treading water. “Happy as a sandboy ― whatever a sandboy is.”

Cord leans in and kisses him. Trulaw gasps and nearly goes under, then kicks his feet to right himself. Cord tilts his head and leans in closer. The thin skin of their lips are the only place their bodies touch, the surface cold but pulsing beneath with warmth and life.  Returning to his senses, Trulaw angles his body away and kicks.

“What are you doing?” he demands, tossing his hair back out of his eyes.

“What's it look like?”

“I mean I know _what_ you're doing, but why?” He treads water more vigorously. “You don't even like me.”

“I like you. I always liked you.”

“Did you?” This information shocks him more than the kiss.

Cord nods, the bottom part of his face disappearing beneath the water. With only his eyes and the curve of his close-cropped head showing he looks like some lurking, prehistoric predator. Trulaw briefly imagines powerful, heavy limbs winding around him and dragging him down under the surface, rolling him two and fro.

“I didn’t know that,” Trulaw’s voice sounds plaintive to his own ears. “But why now? Twenty years we’ve known each other and now, all of a sudden, it seems like a good idea to strip naked and kiss me?”

“Yeah.”

“What were you waiting for?”

“You to let me.” Cord comes closer, his fingertips pressing into the dip at the base of Trulaw’s spine. The touch is firm but gentle, like Cord is coaxing him into improving his form. Trulaw brings his arms up and tentatively rests his wrists on Cord’s shoulders, letting his hands hover above Cord’s skin without touching it. Cord smiles and leans in for another kiss, firmer this time, his tongue flickering between Trulaw’s parted lips.

It’s quite the strangest kiss of his life: cold and warmth, the effort it takes to keep their mouths together, kicking just the right amount to tread water at a constant rate. When Trulaw slips down with a gasp, Cord laughs and pulls him back up. Trulaw cups the back of his neck and lets himself lean in, closing his eyes as he sucks on the other man’s full bottom lip, feeling the chapped skin there, the indentation of an old split.  He shivers and leans his full weight on the other man, grasping Cord’s waist with his knees; Cord grunts and almost lets them both slip under. Trulaw laughs and lets go, swimming back out of his reach. He then turns and strikes back towards the shore with Cord in hot pursuit, his muscles burning with the effort and a giddy, hysterical feeling rising up in him every time Cord’s fingertips threaten to grasp his ankle.

They splash up the shoreline and Trulaw laughs as Cord catches him around his waist and pulls him back against a hard, immovable chest. Cord kisses his neck, sucking and pressing in with his teeth as if he wants to leave a mark.

“Get off,” Trulaw digs a sharp elbow into his abdomen; Cord releases him so quickly that he stumbles forward.

Cord sits back down on the flat rock, leaning back and sunning himself. Trulaw cannot help but notice his half-hard dick, lying plump and huge against his thigh. _Stars_ , he thinks - _I’d forgotten about that_. Cord has always looked to him as if he were built on a larger scale than ordinary mortals. Gingerly, he sits down next to him, intending only to dry off a little before he can dress and be decent again, perhaps convince himself that the aquatic make-out session was a dream. Cord immediately rolls over and plants his hands either side of Trulaw’s shoulders, leaning in for another kiss.

“What are you doing?” he asks, uselessly.

“I’m just providing some shade.”

“Well,” Trulaw says weakly, “stop it.”

“Why?” Cord’s lips brush his collarbone and Trulaw arches up against him helplessly.

“Because anyone could walk by and see this.”

“What do you care?” Cord kisses him again and Trulaw sighs ruefully against his mouth.

“Because we’re in our thirties ― naked cavorting is just tacky at our age.”

Cord shifts, pressing a long, thickly-muscled thigh between Trulaw’s own. Trulaw makes a pathetic, high sort of sound and he feels Cord’s dick (now fully hard) twitch against his hip. It is surreal to think that just twenty minutes ago they were two old acquaintances, sitting fully clothed around a tea table, and now he’s feeling the heat of Cord’s dick against his naked skin. “People can always surprise you,” Porben had said.

“Touch me,” Cord’s voice rumbles in his ear. “You want to get me off? I know you’ll be so good at it.”

Trulaw groans. “Flattery will get you everywhere.” He shoves at Cord’s shoulder. “Go on, then.”

Cord rolls over onto his back and Trulaw straddles him, sitting back on the other man’s thighs and ignoring the hard pressure of the sun-warmed stone beneath his kneecaps. Trulaw takes Cord’s dick in both hands, one gripping him tight around the base and the other twisting as it pulls up towards the glans. Cord puts one hand behind his head and grins up at him.

“Stop looking so smug,” Trulaw tells him.

“You like that.”

“I do not. A dick this big is just crass and unnecessary. How does your tiny engineer even cope with this monstrous thing?”

“She fucks me, mostly.”

Trulaw laughs. “Aren’t you just full of revelations today?”

“You can do it, if you want. I like it rough.”

“Oh there’s a surprise.”

Cord squeezes his hip. “I don’t take much prep.”

“ _Stars_ , Cord. I’m not going to spit-fuck you on a rock.”  

Cord tilts his head back, bites his bottom lip. His unlovely face has a captivating quality when it is transported by pleasure. Trulaw squeezes and pumps his cock faster. His hands are starting to ache from the effort but he is determined.

“Did you fantasize about this when we were in school?” Trulaw presses. “About me?”

“Yeah,” Cord says this in a tone that implies it should be obvious. “Thought about you all the time when I jerked off. Didn’t think it meant anything.”

“You didn’t think it meant anything that you jerked off thinking about boys?”

“Thought about girls, too. And you were pretty, like a girl. Your hair and your big brown eyes. Your tight ass.” Trulaw gasps when Cord gives afore-mentioned asset a hard smack. “Did Hux get that? Lucky bastard.”

“Hux only got what you’re getting right now.” Cord smiles at this, looks smug again. His hips start to twitch to meet Trulaw’s hand. “Are you going to come soon? Honestly, it’s like wrangling a horse.”

“You’re good but I’m not a teenager anymore. C’mere, turn around and move back.”

Trulaw frowns at him. “You want me to...?”

“Sit on my face, yeah.”

“Bloody hell ― is this what your partners have to put up with? A direct line to your Id?”

Cord smiles lazily at him, moves the hand at Trulaw’s hip around and downwards, sliding a finger between his buttocks. “I’ll make it good for you. I’ve got a reinforced jaw and it doesn’t get tired.”

“I’m going to regret this. I can already tell.” Trulaw shakes out his cramped right hand and climbs painfully off the rock, rubbing his knees with a hiss. He straddles Cord’s chest awkwardly, shivering when he feels large, hard-skinned palms cupping that backs of his thighs, pushing them wider so he falls forward with a grunt, steadying himself with one hand on Cord’s hip and the other flat against the stone. Cord pinches and pulls him until he seats himself, gasping at the first press of Cord’s mouth against his hole.

At first he can only hold himself still against the onslaught of the hot, wet tongue sliding over his rim and tickling it in pointed circles. When Cord pushes inside Trulaw falls further forward, moaning and trying to steady himself on trembling thighs. Cord pulls out and nips at the flesh of his right cheek. “Hey. Lean your weight on me. I can take it.”

“Are you sure?” Trulaw glances back awkwardly. “I don’t want to suffocate you.”

“Yeah. Weight’s mostly on my hands. Go for it ― I’ll tap out if I think you’re going to break my nose.”

This time when Cord’s tongue slips inside him he leans into it, feeling the support of the warm hands cupping his thighs. He starts to move his hips, tilting back against the wriggling pressure. Cord makes a deep, rumbling sound of enjoyment and Trulaw gasps, the exhalation trailing into a soft hysterical sound like laughter. Feeling more secure now, Trulaw reaches forward and resumes his stroking of Cord’s thick cock, alternating hands and pulling with a light twisting motion again, as Cord seems to like.

Cord moans for him, pulling back to lick around his rim, already dripping wet with saliva, before pushing back in, moving the tip of his tongue in flickers.

“Ah, fuck, it’s been a long time,” Trulaw shifts his hips back, chasing the sensation.  Cord hums, wriggles his tongue deeper. “Did your little girlfriend teach you this?”

Cord chuckles and Trulaw feels the vibrations of it beneath and inside him. Cord pulls out again, slapping his inner thigh. “Nah, not her. A guy on surface leave taught me this. Second best ass I’ve ever seen.”

Trulaw glares at him over one shoulder. “And I’m supposed to believe that I’m the best? I bet you say that to all the boys, girls and non-binaries you meet.”

Cord squeezes both cheeks of Trulaw’s ass. “It’s up there.” He leans up and licks a stripe from his perineum to his tailbone. “Can you come like this, or…?”

“Not… not quite, no.”

“Turn around and let me suck you, then.”

“You’re very bossy,” Trulaw complains as he awkwardly shuffles around. “Has anyone ever told you that?”

“Not since I made Major, no.”

“Should I be calling you ‘sir’?”

Cord grins crookedly. “Only if you’re thinking of serving under me.”

Trulaw tilts his head back and laughs, clapping one hand to his forehead. “Oh no, this is _terrible_. I already regret every second. If you tell any of our friends about it I’ll deny everything.”

Cord flexes his hands on Trulaw’s hips, tilts his chin back to lick the trail of precome that has dripped down the underside of Trulaw’s cock. Trulaw hisses and takes himself in hand, angling his dick to rub the slick head of it against Cord’s bottom lip. Cord opens wide, lets Trulaw slap the tip of it against his tongue, then closes his lips to suck.

“Mm, you’re good at that,” he says, cupping Cord’s jaw delicately. Cord hums, perhaps in modest agreement. The hands on Trulaw’s hips urge him forward and he starts to fuck Cord’s mouth shallowly, still amazed that Cord both wants to and can take it.

Trulaw closes his eyes and tilts his head back, sighing with the deep pleasure of it. The pain and numbness in his lower legs is oddly grounding and helps him to open up and feel things with more clarity: he is aware that the sun is hot on his back; that the breeze tousles his wet hair against the nape of his neck. For one glorious moment he is alive and present here, fixed in place on the world by the pressure and heat of Cord’s mouth. He rocks faster, given a rhythm by the squeezes of Cord’s firm hands on his hips. The sensation builds in slow, regular pulses and Trulaw pulls back when he feels himself about to come. Cord lets him go, his hands sliding around to Trulaw’s ass again, squeezing and lifting him. Cord gives a low moan of encouragement as he watches Trulaw stroke himself, wet, swollen lips parting. Trulaw gasps and spills himself over the firm swell of Cord’s chest, still beaded with water from their swim.

As Trulaw slumps back, panting, he is rocked by the rough motion of Cord working his own dick. He feels the hot, heavy slap of it against the back of his thigh and then in the crack of his ass, the tip rubbing against his spit-slick hole. Cord arches his back as he comes, making a low, groaning sound, and Trulaw feels a copious wetness spattering against his lower back. He gasps as he feels Cord’s fingertips trailing through the semen on his back, a slippery finger breaching him as Cord stares, his mismatched eyes startlingly intense.

“ _Stars_ , you are…” Trulaw’s hips twitch, spent cock pulsing weakly.

“What?”

“Too much. In every sense.”

Cord grunts, pulls his finger out slowly as Trulaw slumps down onto his chest with a shudder. “Seems like you enjoyed it.”

Trulaw climbs off him slowly and painfully. He rubs his knees and shins as he sits on the stone’s edge, temporarily incapacitated with shooting pains as the blood returns to his lower limbs. “I may never walk again, Cord. I hope you’re pleased with yourself.”

“Yeah,” Cord says, raising one knee and linking his fingers together behind his head. “I am.”

They return to the lake to wash off and then put their clothes back on their wet bodies. The journey back in the speeder is awkward: Trulaw, still vaguely annoyed by the whole ridiculous episode, resolves to be silent the whole way back. However, his good breeding is such that he can’t help himself from making occasional pleasantries, observing, for example, the flourishing nature of the charbote crop and the increasing mildness of the day as the clouds grow denser around them. Cord, who has no such compunctions, reclines his seat and folds his arms across his chest, closing his eyes and falling into a doze.

When Trulaw slides the speeder into a stationary hover on the penthouse terrace, he climbs down to find B1-THX waiting to remind him about an afternoon’s worth of neglected appointments and the looming prospect of a social function later in the evening.

“Madam Serfra called earlier especially to confirm your attendance. I assured her that you wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

 Trulaw had, in fact, planned on begging off the function with a last-minute excuse. Samrita Serfra’s parties were notoriously dull and also inevitably some kind of pretext for securing donations for one of her pet causes. He sighs, feeling tired and unpleasantly damp inside his clothes. “Very good, Beewan. Have the main wardrobe rotated to eveningwear; blues and silvers, I think. Make sure the kitchen serves Major Cord dinner while I’m out.”

 “Major Cord is not to accompany you?” There is a meaningful lilt to the droid’s voice.

 “That is what I just said.” The droid stares back at him, his blank face plate tilted at an angle and the tips of his fingers tapping together restively. “Well, what are you waiting for?”

 “You haven’t dismissed me. I thought you might have more instructions, Master Alten.”

 “There are no more instructions. Go.”

 “Yes, sir.” B1-THX turns and leaves the room with measured, unhurried steps.

 “Your droid is insubordinate,” says Cord.

 “Oh? Do you think I should have him court martialled?”

 “Get it wiped before it breaks its programming.”

 “I don’t recall asking for your advice on matters of household management, Cord.” Trulaw turns away from him and rubs the back of his neck. “I’m going to take a shower.”

 A hand lands on his shoulder, squeezing meaningfully. “Want some company?”

 Trulaw shrugs him off. “No. And I’m going out tonight so you’ll have to make your own entertainment.”

 “So I heard.”

 Trulaw looks back at him, feeling himself flush at what he suspects is a note of reproach. He thinks about telling Cord to get out of his house and bugger off back to the blank, impersonal barracks and dehydrated rations he chose over getting a real life. He is almost certain that if he told Cord to leave, Cord would ― probably with a grunt and a half-shrug.

 “Beewan is a programmed concierge, should you require any tourist information or bookings. I’m taking the chauffeur, but feel free to charge a taxi to my account.”

 “You are always so generous to your friends,” Cord says. The voice is accented with an overdone, upper-class Corellian ― a voice like Trulaw’s own.

 Trulaw had all but forgotten about this talent of Cord’s ― a perfect blend of mimicry and meanness ― but he lets the shock slide away, smiling complacently. “If that’s everything, then, have a lovely evening.” He pivots on his heel and walks quickly towards the stairs, seeking the seclusion of his own suite of rooms.

 *~*~*

 After his shower, Trulaw wraps himself in a robe and perches on the windowsill, smoking a cigarra and pressing the buttons on the remote of the rotating clothes rack. He thinks longingly about a Sullustan Sling but dismisses the urge to send B1-THX for one, given that afternoon gin cocktails are the first step down the road to becoming his mother.

 As the flips back and forth between outfits, he glances over at the comm sitting on his dressing table. The only person in the galaxy who might commiserate with him right now is Wikk, who always has time and sympathy for everyone in his life. Trulaw had resented that once: being wakened by a late-night holo and Wikk rolling out of bed, the muffled sound of his voice as he took the call into the next room.

 “Tell them to get a grip,” Trulaw would call out, eyes narrowed against the light as Wikk paced back and forth past the partially open door. “Or pay a therapist.”

 Perhaps his resentment had been partially jealousy ― he did not like to talk to Wikk about his own darker thoughts - too revealing of his own seamy side, plus Wikk’s horrified reactions to what Trulaw considered relatively tame stories about his own adolescence were unsettling, making it more difficult to hang onto his own blank equanimity in the face of those memories. But now… now he would give anything to hear Wikk’s shocked inhalation of breath and his soft murmur of _oh sweetheart_ ; to see his eyes grow wet with a pain not even his own. He would be sorry for Trulaw even now ― Trulaw could call him and say _darling, I’m lonely. I miss you, I hate myself, don’t leave me like this, give me a chance_ ― _let me change..._

 Wikk might even do it. He had seemed resolved when they spoke on the terrace of the country house, but under that sureness there were flickers of guilt and self-doubt.

  _Don’t abandon me_ , Trulaw could say. _You promised yourself to me once_ ― _did that mean nothing? I can’t live without you._

 This last part would be a lie, of course ― a real, active lie and not just a convenient omission. Trulaw wonders: would it really make a difference, after all? Would Wikk’s kisses be less sweet just because they were constrained, tinged with guilt? It would be strange at first, but they would both become accustomed to the quiet background noise of dissatisfaction. Perhaps Trulaw could never make Wikk truly happy ― as he had once told himself he could ― but he could give Wikk a comfortable life. That was something, maybe even _enough_.

 “To hell with it,” he says out loud, grinding out the end of his cigarra. He unfolds his long body and stands, snatching the frontmost outfit off its hanger. It is a floor-length tunic made of cyrene silk, a dark silver damask set off with a scrolling vine pattern. It has long sleeves and is donned like a surgical gown, then fastened up the back with scores of tiny buttons of Jorallan pearl.

 He slips on the tunic and holds it in place, one hand gripping the garment closed at the small of his back. The fabric is cut to make his figure look angular, like an artist’s preliminary sketch that reduces the human form down to overlapping two-dimensional shapes. His shoulders look broader and more imposing, his torso is v-shaped as it tapers down to his waist, and his lower body seems one long, elegant rectangle. He puts back his shoulders and stares for a moment at this sharper, more cleanly defined version of himself, then he presses the switch on the wall panel to summon B1-THX.

 Human hands would be faster, of course, but he feels like taxing the droid’s fine-motor skills.

 *~*~*

 Trulaw rubs the tension from the back of his neck with one hand as he walks through the darkened reception rooms. He switches on a lamp and reaches over the marble countertop for a bottle of brandy. The night is clear and starry: he will drink a nightcap out on the terrace and smoke a final cigarra before bed.

 “Good night?” comes a gruff voice. Trulaw gasps and almost drops the bottle. He turns to find Cord leaning in the doorway that leads to the living area. He is wearing tracksuit bottoms and a sleeveless white undershirt.

 “Why are you lurking in the dark?” Trulaw asks.

 “I was watching a movie. It finished.”

 “Do you want a drink?”

 “So we can have a repeat of the first night? No thanks.” He folds his arms over his chest, leaning his shoulder against the doorjamb, and gives Trulaw a long, evaluating glance. “You look good in that.”

 Trulaw smooths the fabric over his chest. “I ought to. It cost as much as a new landspeeder.”

 “Who’re you trying to impress?”

 He leans back against the bar and waves his free hand negligently. “No-one. Everyone. Maybe I’m just tired of looking like a drowned rat.”

 Cord approaches Trulaw with a quiet, almost stalking movement, head held low. Trulaw feels his skin heating up and prickling beneath that intent gaze. He squeezes his thighs together unconsciously and feels the stubble burn there.

 “Did you really come all this way just to what… seduce me?” he asks.

 Cord brackets him in with his arms, palms placed flat on the bar top. “You find that hard to believe?”

 “I’m sure there are other fading blondes in the galaxy for you to fuck.”

 “Don’t talk like that.”

 “Like what?”

 “Like we’re nothing to each other.”

 “Cord, as far as I can tell, you have invented an entire history for us. One where you were pining for me like some holodrama heroine. That is not how I remember it.”

 “Your bad memory is not my problem.”

 “What is it you _think_ you know about me?” Trulaw feels Cord’s hand closing around his wrist and squeezing. He lets out a pained hiss and drops the glass he is holding onto the bar top with a thunk.

 “You act like you belong here, like you’re some pillar of the community. You don’t care if these people live or die. You don’t care if your empire burns to the ground.”

 “Of course I care,” Trulaw flashes a cold, angry look at him. “It would be very _inconvenient_.”

 “See? That’s it.” Cord grins, leans in and kisses him. Trulaw closes his eyes and wraps a hand around the back of Cord’s neck, returning the kiss aggressively. He moans when Cord pushes against him with the long, hard line of his thigh. “You wearing anything under this?”

 “Yes, of course,” Trulaw gasps against his mouth. “What do you take me for?”

 Cord rocks against him. “Just wondering how long it’s going to take for you to start leaking through this fancy silk.”

 “I’m not,” Trulaw grunts, “not a horny teenager. I can control myself, unlike some people.”

 “Yeah?” Cord rolls his hips. “Just for that I should make you wait, tease you until you’re begging for it.”

 “Oh please.” Trulaw rolls his eyes, trying not to squirm too obviously as teeth graze his neck. He feels Cord’s fingertips digging into his spine, but before he has time to wonder about it there is a ripping, scratching sound and the feeling of cold stone against his back. A hail of pearls rains down on the parquet floor, thudding, bouncing and skittering.

 “You prick!” he hisses. “All these years and you’re still just a rough, selfish brute.”

 “Yeah?” Cord replies, as if Trulaw is being unreasonable and he, Cord, is gently humouring him. He strips off the ruined tunic in one rough flourish, like pulling a dust cloth off a heap of furniture, then plants a hand at the centre of Trulaw’s chest to hold him in place as he takes a step back to admire him again. “Mmm, sheer,” he says, stroking the waistband of Trulaw’s briefs. “Who are they for?”

 “They’re seamless — I didn’t want to ruin the line of the outfit.”

 “So you didn’t think about me stripping them off you?” Cord’s hand closes around the shape of his dick where it stretches out the fabric and squeezes. “Didn’t think about me putting my mouth on you and sucking you through them?”  

 Now Cord has proposed this scenario it is eminently compelling. Trulaw wraps his arms around the other man’s neck and pulls him in for another hard kiss. Big hands grip Trulaw’s waist and he makes an undignified squawking sound as he finds himself lifted and deposited on the bar top. His bare thighs are held wide and Cord leans down to rub his cheek against the prominent bulge filling out the front of the briefs.

 Cord inhales deeply, rubbing his nose against the crease at the top of Trulaw’s thigh. “You always smell so good... like you don’t even sweat. I used to think about that ― stuck in some hellhole with thirty grunts who haven’t seen a shower in days and I’d imagine your skin, soft and sweet like this.”

 Trulaw tilts his head back, wrapping his hands around the back of Cord’s head, cradling him. He gasps as he feels teeth trail up the underside of his cock, shielded by the slippery fabric. Cord’s lips part and he takes the head of Trulaw’s cock into the warmth of his mouth; there is pressure and just the faintest suggestion of wetness and heat. Cord makes a sound of pleasure deep in his throat and the sensation around the head of Trulaw’s dick gets wetter and more intense as he sucks.

 “Yes,” Trulaw groans, hands flexing on the back of Cord’s skull. “Oh _please_.”

 Cord’s hands slip down his inner thighs and thumbs hook in the leg holes of the briefs, stretching them out, making the fabric catch on the head of Trulaw’s dick with a maddening, slippery drag. Cord’s wet mouth on the bare skin of his inner thigh is almost too much; the feeling of lips and a flickering tongue against the sensitive skin of his balls infinitely so. Cord mouths him half through the fabric and half on bare, heated skin and Trulaw makes a high, startled sound. He rocks back and almost overbalances, grabbing on to Cord’s arm at the last moment to steady himself.

 “Good?” Cord asks him, glancing up as he sucks a bruise on the flesh of Trulaw’s inner thigh.

 “Very.” Trulaw swallows thickly, then pushes at Cord’s shoulder when the other man ducks down to keep going. “ _Wait_ , if we’re going to do this again let’s at least make use of a soft surface.”  He leans forward and wraps his arms around Cord’s neck, using Cord’s huge, solid body as a support so he can slide to the floor, rubbing against him all the way down. They kiss again, swaying slightly as they try to grind on each other while standing up, then Cord sucks on Trulaw’s bottom lip and squeezes his ass in a way that suggests he means business before releasing him and taking a step back.  

“Come on,” Cord reaches out and grasps hold of Trulaw’s hand. “Are we taking this upstairs or what?”

Trulaw looks down at his hand in Cord’s larger, harder one. “Aren’t you going to toss me over your shoulder ― give me a proper ravishing like the brute you are?”

“Give me a break. You have two working knees — throw yourself on the bed.”

It is utterly surreal climbing the stairs by Cord’s side when he’s wearing only spit-wet underwear. Cord looks straight ahead, a narrow look of focus. His hand is very warm and its grip very firm; Trulaw feels as if this is the only thing stopping him from floating away into the atmosphere from the bizarreness of it all. Cord tugs him left, towards the master bedroom.

 “You want to do this in my room?”

 “Sure,” Cord replies. “Why, do you have some special appointment for it — a fucking parlor?”

 “Very droll,” Trulaw says. It has just struck him that he hasn’t has anyone in this bed since Wikk and that he has been subconsciously preserving the space like a shrine. The first thing Cord does is yank off the embroidered silk counterpane and throw it on the floor. His irreverence is refreshing.

 Trulaw shoves down the briefs and steps out of them, bouncing down onto the mattress as he watches Cord pull the A-shirt over his head and push down his tracksuit bottoms. His big cock springs up against his stomach and Cord grins when he catches Trulaw staring. “You like what you see?”

 Trulaw lifts up his foot and trails a toe down Cord’s abdomen, feeling it grow tense and as hard as armour. “You’re not my type, but I won’t deny there’s a certain charm.”

 “Yeah I know your type: soft round the edges.” Cord comes down onto the mattress and crawls over Trulaw, bracketing him in with this arms. Trulaw reaches up to feel the definition of his chest, strokes around until he can feel Cord’s shoulder muscles shifting beneath his hands as Cord leans down to kiss him; deep and demanding. He trails his hands down to Cord’s hips and feels the hard, flatness there, the sharp definition of his iliac furrow. Wikk was soft and yielding everywhere and Trulaw had loved it ― his gently convex stomach, his thick thighs and dimpled, feminine ass; loved even his sweet self-consciousness about it.

 Cord kisses as if he expects any minute to be interrupted; a rough, determined focus, one hand spanning Trulaw’s jaw. With difficulty, Trulaw pulls away, turning his head to the side and gasping for breath. “Bloody hell! Slow down a minute ― we’re not about to march into battle.” Cord gives him a faintly wounded look. “Here,” he says, more kindly, “let me show you what I like.” He pushes at the other man’s shoulder until Cord rolls off him onto his side. Trulaw leans into the momentum, pushing Cord onto his back and lying draped on top of him.

 “You think being rough and insistent means your partner feels it more: not so. Here ― relax,” he places his fingertips against the scarred portion of Cord’s face, trails them lightly down over his lips, “close your eyes, let your mouth go soft. There, like that ― now don’t move, just let me…” Trulaw leans over him and rubs his lips against Cord’s, the lightest, nuzzling pressure. He hears Cord inhale sharply, the low sound of arousal. Trulaw smiles, turns his head and lowers down to keep up the light, ghosting touch, squeezing Cord’s waist with his knees. “There, see?”

 “That’s good,” Cord agrees, settling his hands back on Trulaw’s hips.

 “Now tell me what you like — what _you_ want.”

 Cord moistens his lips, eyes fluttering almost closed. “I want a lot of things. I want to fuck you ― see what it looks like when you’re spread open, sinking down on my dick.” He grunts, twists his mouth in consideration, “but that will take too long.”

 “Yes,” Trulaw agrees, reaching down to give the base of Cord’s weighty cock a squeeze. “This is really more of a medium to long-term proposal.”

 “I want to eat your ass again ― let you rub yourself off on the mattress while I do it. Most of all, I want you to fuck me. Open me up with your long fingers and tell me how it looks and feels. Put that pretty pink cock in me ― don’t be too gentle about it.”

 Trulaw tilts his head to the side, stroking Cord’s dick with a touch that is now idle and familiar. “I haven’t topped anyone in… oh, at least a decade.”

 “You don’t like it?”

 “It’s not my preference. I like being held down. Acted upon.”

 Cord grunts, unimpressed. “Sounds kind of lazy.”

 Trulaw laughs. “Alright, I’ll indulge you, but remember that I did warn you that I’m rusty.” He leans over and opens the bedside drawer ― Wikk’s bedside drawer, in fact ― feeling over tangled electronics leads and scattered cosmetics until he detects the shape of a familiar tube. The thick, oil-based lubricant that makes for a frictionless glide.

 Cord spreads his thighs eagerly, biting his bottom lip as he shifts down the bed. Trulaw drizzles the lube into his hand liberally, rubs Cord’s hole with three fingers to tease before slipping in the tip of just one. “Who did this to you first ― a man or a woman?”

 “A woman.”

 “Let me guess, you were all ‘baby, no, I don’t like that gay shit’?”

 Cord chuckles deep in his chest. “Yeah, right up until she rubbed my prostate.”

 “And then you changed your tune?”

 Cord shifts his hips, lets his eyes flutter closed. “Mmm, right there that’s good.”

 Trulaw twists his finger and pushes in deeper.

 Cord wets his lips again, brow furrowing. “How come you never did this with Hux?”

 “Mmm,” Trulaw tilts his head. “Lack of privacy. Lack of resources. Also my not really trusting him much further than I could throw him.”

 “What, you thought he’d brag?”

 “No, nothing like that. I thought he might be insufferably smug about it, I suppose.” He pulls out and pushes back in with two fingers, watches Cord bite down on his lip and arch his back, one hand working his own cock, which almost looks in proportion to his hand. It has been a long time since Trulaw has seen sex from this angle and there is something compelling about it: the vulnerability and openness of the other man’s body, the shifting expressions of pleasure. He crooks his fingers and rubs in a circle, listening to Cord moan, feeling his huge powerful body surge up and tremble beneath him. A hand grasps at his hip.

 “C’mon, c’mon. I told you that you don’t need to drag it out ― fuck me already.”

 Trulaw slicks up his dick and pushes in, putting his shoulder under Cord’s good knee to push his hips up to a better angle. Cord arches up to meet him with a groan. “Fuck, _yes_.”

 Trulaw thrusts a few times until he finds himself bottoming out, gasps at the unfamiliar heat and tightness. “Bigger than your girlfriend’s dick?” he asks, watching Cord’s brow crease with pleasure as he moves.

 Cord tosses his head on the pillow in an urgent negative, eyes still tightly closed. “No, hers is bigger.”

 Trulaw makes a soft, hysterical sound of amusement, rocking deeper. “Is it pink like mine?”

 “Black.”

 “Oh, very nice. Smooth or ribbed?” Trulaw lets out a high-pitched yelp when a blow from a hard, paddle-like hand comes down on his ass without warning.

 “You talk too much,” says Cord, grunting. “Shut up and put your back into fucking me.”

 “Yes, _sir._ ” Trulaw tosses his hair back off his forehead to find that it sticks there ― he is sweating now. As he thrusts he feels the work of it in his tensing thighs and stomach muscles, the small of his back, but when he looks down at Cord ― eyes tightly closed and mouth open, frowning as if the pleasure of it annoys him ― Trulaw thinks that the effort is worth it.

 It is fast and rough, without the finesse Trulaw likes when he is the one receiving. Cord’s thighs squeeze his chest so hard he can do nothing but grunt and shove while he fights for breath. The pressure around his dick is so tight and perfect that he doesn’t even try to hold back or make it last. When he comes he gasps and bucks, feeling like the orgasm is being dragged out of him; his knees go out from under him and he falls heavily on top of Cord. Cord kisses his jaw and groans as Trulaw’s cock slips out and drags down the inside of his thick, trembling thigh.

 Trulaw pants there on the outcropping of Cord’s chest for a long moment, then gathers his strength to sit back on his heels and consider the other man still spread out before him, sweating and trembling but unsatisfied. Cord’s hand is curled loosely around the base of his cock, Trulaw pulls it away and replaces it with his own, running his thumb along the prominent vein with a firm pressure that makes Cord moan and work his hips.

  “More?” Trulaw says, just to tease him.

 Cord nods, mouth open. “Anything. Fuck, do anything to me.”

 Trulaw wonders about the possibilities of that: how many fingers could he work into Cord and have him still push back and love it? For now he settles, conservatively, for the middle two, watching the mess of lubricant and his own come trickling slowly down towards the hollow of his palm. Still working Cord’s cock with his off hand, he pulls out and gives a quarter turn on the push back in, crooking his long index finger and pressing the knuckle firmly into the space behind Cord’s heavy, plump balls. Cord makes a sound Trulaw can only describe as a wail, his whole body going taut as he comes; the long spurts of semen hitting his taut belly confirming that really _everything_ about Cord is too much.

 Trulaw flops onto his back next to Cord and they lie together panting until Trulaw starts to laugh, a soft, hysterical wheeze that hurts his strained stomach muscles but which he can’t seem to stop.  

 “What?” Cord turns his head and scowls at him.

 “No, sorry — that was _lovely_ , really. It’s just... if I had to choose who from our old set would turn out to be some kind of pansexual polyamorous playboy, you would have been last on the list.” When Cord continues to frown at him he adds: “No offense.”

“Who would have been first?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Yungkai, but then again that little shit never lived up to any of his potential. Did I tell you he bought a creepy lizard?”

“You just had your dick in my ass. I’m not talking to you about Yungkai’s lizard.”

“He called it Armitage!”

Cord sits up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “I’m going to use your shower. Come join me if you’re finished being weird.”

“I’m not weird,” Trulaw protests, struggling to sit up. “My manners are impeccable and everyone says so.”

After the shower, Cord falls back into Trulaw’s bed while Trulaw opens the window and sits up on the sill, smoking a cigarra and blowing threads of smoke into the night air, now cool with the sense of approaching autumn.

When he feels his eyelids starting to droop he stubs out the cigarra and crawls into bed, commands off the lights. He is already half asleep when he feels something warm travelling the length of his spine: the back of a finger. He rolls over and puts his arm over his companion’s chest, nestling into the crook of his neck.

 “What, darling?” he murmurs. Drowsy and unthinking, he has slipped back into old patterns, supposing for a moment that the man lying next to him is his sweet, good-natured husband and not some unfeeling brute whose job it is to make scared children fit to die.

 Cord makes a sleepy, contented sound, wrapping an arm around Trulaw’s back. Trulaw recalls that Wikk is not here ― doesn’t want to be here, holding him close. Wikk is too good for him; Cord is not ― Cord doesn’t have any tiresome principles that might get in the way of living his life. Trulaw closes his eyes and sleeps.

 ~*~*

 Trulaw wakes to find dawn touching the edges of the curtains with a grey haze. He rolls onto his back, shoulder bumping the unmoving mass of Cord’s chest. The scarred portion of Cord’s face is buried in the pillow; he looks young and untroubled, though Trulaw can still see the crooked bridge of his nose. It was always like that, even when they first met, so it must have been broken when he was very young — probably by one of Cord’s beastly brothers. Trulaw saw them once, at graduation: they shoved and jostled, trying to knock off each other’s caps. There was no malice in their behaviour towards one another, but no care either — pain and annoyance were little chips to be traded in a never-ending game of their own invention.

 One of them is dead now, though Trulaw can’t remember if it was the elder or the younger brother. Hux sent him the obit ― _Captain Eustace Cord_ ― and Trulaw sent Cord a condolence message, but got no reply. He remembers being faintly relieved at the radio silence; he couldn’t imagine Cord expressing grief, or the formulaic politeness generally conveyed in such replies. _The family thanks you for your kind thoughts at this difficult time_.

 Trulaw suddenly remembers the mess they left behind in the living area — the cleaning droids will start their rounds at five-hundred and they will not be able to distinguish between tiny pearls and dirt or grit. He slips out from under Cord’s heavy arm and rises from the bed, pulling on the silk robe he left draped over the back of the chair the previous evening and belting it loosely around his waist.

 He finds the first pearl on the stairs, though how it got there is a mystery ― transferred in a fold of clothing, perhaps, like a breadcrumb dropped to mark his way back. He sits down on a step and picks up the pearl, sliding it into his pocket. To make space for it he takes out the slim, silver case residing there and pops it open, sticking a cigarra between his lips and sparking the case’s inbuilt lighter. He rubs at the small of his back, feeling a stiffness there and leans his head against the bannister. A memory surfaces, of sitting in this position in a different house ― less modern, cold and empty because most of the furniture had been sold. He remembers looking through the gaps between the carved balusters at the shadows falling in the early morning light: sharp rectangles, like the paintings he had seen in the municipal gallery – bold, geometric shapes that were, not, according to his mother, really ‘art’.

 He recalls the sound of his mother and father arguing ― he could not hear their words, only the cadences of their voices: his mother’s high and insistent, his father’s low and placating. After a minute or two his father had emerged from the room beyond ― a study, as Trulaw remembers. In his memory, his father’s face is very round, with two tufts of eyebrow hovering uncertainly two-thirds of the way up. He does not look like this in photographs; he was quite a handsome man, at least in the pictures of him in his younger years. Trulaw’s memory blurs and simplifies him into an abstract suggestion of Father: a blank circle with two yellow lines, a rectangular body draped in a chequered coat.

 Trulaw cannot remember the exact details of the exchange, but his mind invents them for him, bridging the gaps between images by multiplying words upon words. “Hey sport,” his father said (didn’t say), sitting down next to Trulaw on the step. “What are you doing up?”

 Trulaw remembers with absolute clarity the pitch of his own emotions that day; his desperation to do something that would prevent the disaster he could feel bearing down on top of him. He had always been afraid and now he knew why: it was this — _this_ , always coming and none of them were stopping it. “Why can’t we sell the house?” he demanded tremulously. “Move somewhere smaller. I could go to a state school ― I don’t care!”

 His father sighed, shoulders slumping. “I know it might not seem that way, but appearances are important right now.” He patted Trulaw’s knee. “It won’t be so bad. Your uncle went to an academy ― he liked it, so your mother says.”

 “I won’t like it.” Tears pricked the corners of Trulaw’s eyes, he shook his head vehemently. “I don’t want to go away — please, I want to stay here with you.”

 His father had looked at him then ― an expression of pain and fondness rolled together ― and he put his arm around Trulaw, folding him under his coat that was threadbare and smelled of cheap tabac. He kissed the top of Trulaw’s head, leaned his cheek there and sighed once more, deflating. “I’m sorry, Fen. I’m sorry about all of it.”

 Trulaw understood then that love could be an empty, useless thing. His own tears wouldn't change anything, no more than his father's sighs of regret. He breathed out and let the anger and injustice slide away.

 Now, Trulaw breathes again, exhaling a stream of smoke through his nose. He twists off his wedding ring with some difficulty; the skin underneath it looks pale and compressed. He slips the band into his pocket and rises to his feet, continuing his journey down the stairs.

 Entering the Senatorial Suite, he swears and almost drops the lit cigarra from his mouth as a pearl embeds itself in the flesh of his heel. He lifts up his foot and hops until he catches it, then picks his way more gingerly across the floor to where his tunic lies in a tattered heap. He stubs out his cigarra in an ashtray on a nearby table, then gathers up the creased fabric and shakes it out, folding the garment into a rough square. An exercise in futility, probably: the whole thing is stretched out of shape and ripped beyond repair. Perhaps, like Berkal, he is simply trying to exert some power over his surroundings and in some small way render the galaxy less cruel and chaotic. He studiously ignores the large empty rectangle on the wall where the wallpaper is unfaded.

 He drapes the folded cloth over the arm of a chair and moves over to the bar, where most of the pearls are scattered in a wide circle. He sits down with his back against the siding and begins to gather, plinking the pearls into the hollow of his left hand.

 After a minute of this, the light slap of bare feet on the floor makes him look up towards the doorway: Cord, shirtless but with his tracksuit bottoms hastily pulled up. He has one hand to the small of his back and his stride is uneven as he favours his right leg.

 “Sleep well?” Trulaw asks. “Mind the pearls. It hurts like hell to stand on one.”

 “Thought you’d taken off.”

 “Forgotten my guest again, you mean?” he chuckles. “No, just tidying up.”  

 Cord lowers himself slowly to the ground; that strange, almost balletic movement with one leg extended. He puts a hand on the back of Trulaw’s neck and leans down to kiss his temple. Cord’s affectionate touches are as easy and untroubled as the shoves and slaps he used to give his brothers.

 Trulaw pinches another pearl between forefinger and thumb and brings it to the collection in the palm of his hand. It skitters down the pile and thuds and bounces back across the floor.

 “Here.” Cord offers his own, larger hand, upturned. Trulaw makes a fist, then lets the pearls trickle through his grip one by one, into their new container. Cord’s palm and the nail beds of his fingers are a deep pink and the pearls seem at home there, their opalescent surfaces harmoniously reflecting the warm light, as if in some answering sympathy.

 Trulaw starts when he looks up and realises that Cord’s eye socket is empty - or not empty, precisely, because there is black metallic scaffolding around the cavity, but the eye itself is missing. Trulaw blinks and looks away - not because he is squeamish, but because it seems far too personal — a view into the hidden depths of his skull. “You didn’t lose that somewhere in the mess, did you?”

 Cord shakes his head. “What? Oh, no ― I have to sterilize it.”

 “Really? I thought by 34 ABY we’d have mastered the self-cleaning eyeball.”

 Cord shrugs. “Newer models, maybe.”

 Trulaw nods at the leg laid out straight on the floor. “Why don’t you get your knee fixed?”

 “Not a priority — I’m a non-combatant now.”

 “But First Order medical are not the be-all and end-all now, are they? You could get the surgery here on Corellia.” As soon as the words slip out Trulaw realises the reason Cord has not sought private medical treatment is obvious. “I’d be happy to take care of it for you,” he adds, awkwardly.

 A muscle tenses in Cord’s jaw and he turns his face away. “No.”

 “Sorry. Offering to pay for orthopedic surgery is probably a very weird way to thank someone for sex. Wikk used to get cross at me for things like that — throwing money at his problems.” After a beat of silence he says. “What shall we do today? I feel like cancelling all my meetings and making Beewan very cross.”

 Cord thinks for a moment. “Can we go fool around in the water again?”

 Trulaw laughs. “Yes darling, we can go down to the bay. I know a very quiet little beach.”

 “Quiet, huh?”

 “Oh yes. I own it ― I love to swim there, but I suppose I don’t go as often as I should.”  

 “You have a swimmer’s body,” Cord says appreciatively, running his hand the length of Trulaw’s side.

 “Perhaps it’s morbid that I love the water so much. My father died in it ― did I tell you that? My mother always insisted it was an accident and that he must have fallen in, but, you know, when they pulled him out of the river there were stones in the pocket of his overcoat. Do you think that’s a bad omen - being taught to swim by a drowned man?”

 Cord grunts thoughtfully. “Seems like it might teach you not to drown.”

 “I do hope so. There’s too much death and I would hate to add to it. It’s bloody undignified, don’t you think?”

 “Sometimes.”

 “I’m sick of losing things.” Belatedly, Trulaw realises that Cord is still holding all the gathered pearls. He stands up and retrieves an empty glass from the bar, then squats down and cups his hands around Cord’s so together they can tip the pearls into the new receptacle.

 “Can you get it fixed?” Cord asks.

 “What?”

 “Your dress thing.”

 “It’s a tunic. And no, I don’t think so.”

 “Sorry.”

 “No, don’t apologise. Honestly, I’ve never had someone want me so much as to physically rip me out of my clothes. It was very flattering.”

 “Any time.”

 Trulaw laughs, pushes Cord with his shoulder. They sit together in companionable silence for a moment, heads tilted together, until an alarm goes off on Cord’s wrist chrono.

 “Shit. I need to call my girlfriend ― she’ll be getting off shift.”

 “Oh.”

 “You can come and say hi. She’s cool — you’ll like her.”

 “Won’t that be awkward?”

 “Nah. She knows why I’m here.”

 “To cheer me up with your cock?”

 Cord snorts, hooks his arm around Trulaw’s neck and squeezes, ruffles his hair none-too-gently. Trulaw is struck with the giddy realization that he is being _roughhoused_ with.

 “Let me tell you why I’m here.” Cord murmurs against his ear. “Nik was looking through some old stuff from back in the day ― the academy days. You remember those group photos they used to take and print out on flimsi?”  

 “One assumes, to send back to our parents as proof of life. Oh yes, I remember those.”

 “I still have the one from 17. And she’s going through it like: ‘did you want to fuck him? How about him, is he still cute?’ And I’m like ‘no way’ and ‘that fucker got blown into so many pieces the only thing they could find to bury was a foot’.”

 Trulaw laughs. “Poor Haarling. At least the Order weren’t put to much expense for his funeral.”

 He feels Cord smile against his ear. “ _Listen_. So she gets to your picture and she says ‘oh Marion, I _know_ you wanted that’ and I’m like ‘damn right I did. And he’s still fine and I still want it’ and she says ‘well, what’s stopping you?’”

 “Good question.”

 “I’m like: ‘baby, I’m not his type’ and ‘shit, he’s still hung up on some soft-bellied Core Worlder.’ She says: ‘so what? You’re going to wait another twenty years to tell him you want him?’”

 “She sounds like quite the motivational speaker. You should recommend her to Hux.”

 “Yeah, she’s great. I’m crazy about her.”

 “And it’s that simple ― there’s no jealousy?”

 “It’s not always simple. But look, shit is different out there. There are no guarantees or long-term plans, you have to take the good times where you find them. Took me too long to work that out.”

 “‘Seize the day’ and all that rot?”

 “Back when I was a lieutenant I had this bunkmate. He kissed me and I acted like I didn’t want it. Got angry at him and then regretted it. I had my apology all planned out but he didn’t make it back from our last deployment. I don’t know who I was even trying to kid ― what a waste.”

 “And what, you think he just lost the will to live because you refused his advances?”

 “Nah. Shit wouldn’t have gone down any different, but we would have had a memory ― a really good memory.”

 “That’s very philosophical of you, Cord.” Trulaw climbs to his feet, places the glass of pearls on the bar top out of harm’s way.

 Cord blinks up at him. “You can call me Marion, you know.”

 “You used to hate that name.”

 “I thought it sounded soft. Now I don’t mind being soft, sometimes.”

 “There’s something they never taught us in school.”

 “Right,” Cord holds out his arm and Trulaw bends, helping to steady him as he gets his good leg underneath him and pushes himself off the floor. They sway together as they try to regain their balance. Trulaw kisses him ― just once, very lightly, and still smiling against his lips ― before he lets him go.


End file.
